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OpenAlex is a fully open catalog of the global research system. It’s named after the ancient Library of Alexandria and made by the nonprofit OurResearch. This is the technical documentation for OpenAlex, including the OpenAlex API and the data snapshot. Here, you can learn how to set up your code to access OpenAlex’s data. If you want to explore the data as a human, you may be more interested in OpenAlex Web.

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Data

The OpenAlex dataset describes scholarly entities and how those entities are connected to each other. Types of entities include works, authors, sources, institutions, topics, publishers, and funders. Together, these make a huge web (or more technically, heterogeneous directed graph) of hundreds of millions of entities and billions of connections between them all. Learn more at our general help center article: About the data

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Access

We offer a fast, modern REST API to get OpenAlex data programmatically. It’s free but requires an API key (also free). Get yours at openalex.org/settings/api. With your free key, you get $1/day of free usage. Learn more Different API operations have different costs. See rate limits and authentication for details. There is also a complete database snapshot available to download. Learn more about the data snapshot here. The API has a free daily limit of $1/day, and the snapshot is updated monthly. If you need a higher limit, or more frequent updates, please look into a paid plan. The web interface for OpenAlex, built directly on top of the API, is the quickest and easiest way to get started with OpenAlex.

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Why OpenAlex?

OpenAlex offers an open replacement for industry-standard scientific knowledge bases like Elsevier’s Scopus and Clarivate’s Web of Science. Compared to these paywalled services, OpenAlex offers significant advantages in terms of inclusivity, affordability, and availability. OpenAlex is:
  • Big — We have about twice the coverage of the other services, and have significantly better coverage of non-English works and works from the Global South.
  • Easy — Our service is fast, modern, and well-documented.
  • Open — Our complete dataset is free under the CC0 license, which allows for transparency and reuse.
Many people and organizations have already found great value using OpenAlex. Have a look at the Testimonials to hear what they’ve said!

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Contact

For tech support and bug reports, please visit our help page. You can also join the OpenAlex user group, and follow us on Twitter (@OpenAlex_org) and Mastodon.

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Citation

If you use OpenAlex in research, please cite this paper:
Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R. (2022). OpenAlex: A fully-open index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and concepts. ArXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01833